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9.01.2011

Share a Build Week: Day 4

Today was a brick workout - tempo bike, easy run. Thursdays are my hard bike workouts so I do tempo, threshold, hills, etc. A lot of times it's just a bike day and I go out and crush it. But as races draw near, it becomes a brick day. Today's plan was for an "easy" tempo ride followed by a fairly easy run. I put tempo in quotes because tempo is never really easy.

The plan for the bike was to ride at the bottom of my tempo zone. I wanted to get in some good, hard work on the bike but not wear myself out too much for the weekend. It gets tough when my volume is high and I have key workouts on the weekends. I like to still get in the hard work, but I have to dial it back a bit sometimes so I don't beat myself into the ground.

I tried uploading my workout and it appears the file may be corrupt. Garmin, you continue to disappoint me. A $500 bike computer and you can't even count on it. I've been let down by Garmin so many times it doesn't even upset me anymore. It's business as usual. I should have gotten a Joule....or maybe I should go back to the little yellow computer. I never once had a corrupt file with that computer. I still have it.

Luckily, I watch my power meter closely so I knew my numbers before I hopped off the bike.I felt decent on the bike, but the heat (90 degrees and humid) got to me a little toward the end. I'm not used to it. But other than that, it was a good ride. Not too hard, not too easy.

Edit: I managed to get my file to upload this morning. It turns out the history stopped saving halfway and this morning it saved completely when I plugged in my Garmin. The numbers didn't change for my warm up and tempo. Here are the numbers for the overall ride:Ave watts: 221Norm watts: 225VI: 1.02KJ: 2342 (that's also how many calories I burned)Elevation Gain: 1861Ave HR: 137Cadence: 86Distance: 61.03Ave Speed: 20.8 TSS: 171.4

Much better.

I used this workout as a sweat rate test, so I'll be blogging about that in the near future. I've been doing some testing with my nutrition and hydration lately - it turns out I sweat a lot more than I thought and haven't done a good job with hydration the past 36 years. Live and learn. After the bike, I headed out for a quick run. The plan was to start slow and build the pace on the second half if I felt good.

Run: 30 minutes. 3.75 miles. 8:03 pace.

I started easy and ran an 8:15 pace for the first 15 minutes. By then I had settled in and had my running legs under me (I have two sets of legs - cycling and running....if swimming legs exist, I'm pretty sure I don't have them) so I stepped it up and ran a 7:50 pace for the second half. Overall, it was a decent workout. I'm happy with it. I hit my goals and got in some hard work without beating myself into the ground. My legs feel pretty good post-workout.